One of every six people in the world today doesn’t have enough safe water to drink. Within 30 years, thirst will spread to three-quarters of the world’s population.
Humans use lots of technologies to make fresh water from salty, but they are expensive, energy-intensive, with environmental issues.
evaporating water and condensing it somewhere else, leaving the salt behind,
actively pushing saltwater through a semi-permeable membrane, leaving salt on one side and fresh water on the other.
It is estimated that some 30% of the world's irrigated areas suffer from salinity problems and remediation is seen to be very costly.
What's the problem?
New advances in energy-efficient desalination technology could help provide clean water to those who need it most. How does Nature Make Saltwater Drinkable? - we can learn from some of these ideas.
Ask - What are some of the ways to remove salt from seawater?
Imagine - If you could imitate Nature, what would you do?
Plan, Create - What would you need to build your idea? Are the items you need available now?
Improve - What would be needed to make one of the existing desalination processes more efficient and cost effective?
That's engineering
water pump - to transport water from source to desalination facility, and for fresh water distribution - pumping capacity necessary to move the volume of water being processed based on distance and change in elevation.
surface tension - many desalination units rely on surface tension. Sea water evaporates in a closed container, the salt is left behind. The fresh water condenses, and can be drained off thanks to surface tension.
Create a desalinization plant - construct a "solar still" which uses heat from the sun to run a distillation process to cause dew to form on something like plastic sheeting.
One of every six people in the world today doesn’t have enough safe water to drink. Within 30 years, thirst will spread to three-quarters of the world’s population.
Humans use lots of technologies to make fresh water from salty, but they are expensive, energy-intensive, with environmental issues.
It is estimated that some 30% of the world's irrigated areas suffer from salinity problems and remediation is seen to be very costly.
What's the problem?
New advances in energy-efficient desalination technology could help provide clean water to those who need it most. How does Nature Make Saltwater Drinkable? - we can learn from some of these ideas.
That's engineering
Engineering ideas
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